- What is digital photography?
- History of digital photography
- What is digital photography for?
- Characteristics of digital photography
- Advantages of digital photography
- Disadvantages of digital photography
We explain what digital photography is and what it is for. In addition, its history, main characteristics, advantages and disadvantages.
What is digital photography?
Digital photography is a process capturing still images through a camera obscura, very similar to the one involved in Photography traditional, but instead of using photosensitive films and developing chemicals, it captures the light by means of an electronic sensor composed of photosensitive units.
The images thus captured are also converted into electrical signals and stored in an electronic memory, following the same formats and protocols of communication of digital memories computers, and applying various format and compression mechanisms to the photograph taken.
Digital photography, as well as traditional photography, lends itself both to the recording and documentation of historical, family or personal events, as well as to artistic exploration, adding to these senses the possibility of intervening or modifying the image computationally, once taken. and stored.
It is a revolutionary technological advance that forever changed the photographic industry and allowed the emergence of visual arts digital.
History of digital photography
The first digital camera in history was created by the Kodak industry, a pioneer in the photographic industry, in 1975.Developed by Steve Sasson, it was the size of a toaster and had a very poor resolution (0.01 megapixels), in addition to the fact that the digital image saving process was extremely slow: 23 seconds it took to save a blank photograph and black on a cassette tape, and the same time to retrieve it once stored.
However, those first attempts opened up a huge field of development, which leads in a straight line to modern digital cameras, with enormous resolution capacity, speed of shooting and saving, as well as other modern capabilities such as digital (and not optical) zoom. ), or even the DSLR system.
What is digital photography for?
Digital photography was the logical step in the photographic industry in the face of accelerated computerization that began at the end of the 20th century. The need to be able to transfer the images taken to a computer system without first going through a development process and subsequent scanning, in which the image could be damaged or distorted, was a great advance in the world of visual management, hastening the time and lowering costs, by being able to take many photos in a row and preview them without having to wait for development.
Characteristics of digital photography
Digital photography introduced the term “pixel” (from picture element, in English) to photography, being the smallest unit of image that captures a value of gray or color. Thus, the more pixels a camera takes in, the larger and more complete the image it captures.
On the other hand, digital cameras incorporated the ability to digital zoom, approximating the image through non-optical magnification, and also the ability to take videos, impossible with a traditional camera. As the technology advances, the cameras improve in all its aspects and even allow filming in HD values.
Advantages of digital photography
The main advantages of digital photography are:
- Immediacy. The ability to take the photos and dispose of them at once, without having to go through a development process in which the images could also be damaged, is undoubtedly a huge contribution. The photograph is available within moments of taking it.
- cheapening of costs. By eliminating film rolls and the entire development process, the photographer saves a fortune on material that, furthermore, might not be useful to him once developed.
- Storage. A digital card can store many more photos than a roll of 48 photos that was common in the past. In addition, you can modify the compression format of the images or delete the defective ones to maximize the storage capacity.
- Technical advantages. The latest digital cameras provide the photographer with technical information in real time, about the image's RGB values, its histogram, its ISO values and many other things that were previously lacking.
Disadvantages of digital photography
The main disadvantages of digital photography are:
- The cost of the cameras. Since they are now small computers, professional cameras are really expensive.
- Electronic noise. Due to the constant electrical flow inside the camera, the images have a margin of "noise" or image imperfection that is more noticeable when using low ISO values. For many photographers the grain of a 35mm film is much more pleasant than that of a digital camera.
- Resolution. While an ordinary 35mm film had the equivalent of a resolution of approximately 87 megapixels, which is still unattainable for a digital camera that is usually around 45 megapixels.